Leonidas Correa, Homage to the Rose II, 2000. Image: gallerymoos.com

Nicaraguan-born Costa Rican artist Leonidas Correa’s stunningly well-crafted New Realist still lifes are starkly minimalist, yet recall Magritte’s surrealist fantasy (and the more contemporary surrealism of Mark Kostabi - see bottom.)

Rene Magritte, La Chambre d’Ecoute, 1952. Image: ncsu.edu

The New Realist paintings and sculpture of (VoCA favorite) Howard Kanovitz also come to mind. Kanovitz has been called the most poetic of the group who began to forge novel expressive truths from the photographic image in the sixties.

Howard Kanovitz, The Opening, 1967. Image: howardkanovitz.com

Sam Hunter has said of Kanovitz: “The meticulous airbrush technique and Kanovitz’s exactness of vision produce an atmosphere of doubt rather than certitude, and pose questions of meaning which challenge the nature of artistic experience. Like the first discoverers of trompe l’oeil and especially the Flemish Renaissance masters, Kanovitz makes us acutely aware of artistic process and the miracle of vision, as well as material reality. The more crystalline his illusions, the less assurance they seem to provide.

Howard Kanovitz, The Dance, 1965. Image: howardkanovitz.com

However, Kanovitz magically asserts through his paintings many of the unresolvable ambiguities of vision; nothing is less sure or more sure than a given set of visual facts, especially when mediated by photographic techniques and the hard, bright simulations of illustrated commercial journalism.”

Correa’s subjects are often reflective; he is interested in optical deformities, not unlike the illusions produced by the mirror in the background of Van Dyck´s painting, The Arnolfini Wedding.

Leonidas Correa, Grapefruit and Green Pear, 2000. Image: gallerymoos.com

Leonidas Correa, Watermelon, 2002. Image: gallerymoos.com

Correa lived for fourteen years in Toronto, where he is presently represented by the Walter Moos Gallery.

Mark Kostabi, The Mathematics of Dreams, 1993. Image: thurstonroyce.com